Of Video Games and Growing Up
by sarsaparillia
Summary: I'm just an ordinary kid. I listen to music, I have a twin sister, my parents fail as parents, and I hate the boy who lives across the street. — Suigetsu/Karin.
1. Of Video Games and Growing Up

Written at one in the morning, people. I apologize for this. Really, I do. Seriously. O.o

**Disclaimer**: Naruto is not mine, and no money is being made from this fan-fiction.

**Dedication**: To Melissa, for the prompts.

---

I wake up screaming.

But what else is new, right? I always wake up screaming, and it kind of sucks. I roll over, and stare at my twin sister's blurry, sleeping face across the room.

She's mumbling in her sleep, but it is something Sakura always does. I snort to myself. _Nothing_ wakes Sakura up. _Nothing_. She's so used to my screaming at random intervals in the night that it doesn't even bother her anymore.

I'd been having a nightmare. That's why I screamed. Because I get the worst nightmares. This one consisted of being dressed up in a tiny cat-suit-skirt-thing that was skin tight, and hooker boots. Me, in hooker boots and a _skirt_.

I shuddered to myself. I hate skirts. Hooker boots… well, I steal Sakura's pair all the time. I like boots.

I yawn, and grab my glasses off my nightstand, and I shove them on my face. The blurry room comes into focus, and I yawn again.

Getting up early to go to school really isn't a nice thing.

I walk across the messy room (two teenage girls; what do you expect?) and I prod Sakura in the shoulder, and when that doesn't work, I simply drag her out of bed.

She growls as she wakes up. "Get offa me Karin, I'm still 'sleep…"

"We're got _school_," I remind her, and she grudgingly gets up. Honestly, Sakura dislikes school too much for her own good. She's not stupid; she understands everything, but she's too lazy to do the actual work.

I shake my head to myself. And this is the girl that is going to be Valedictorian, without even trying.

I sigh, and slip into our bathroom to get cleaned up. Sakura could use the bathroom in the basement; it was her turn, anyways.

I know our parents have already left. We never see our parents. Our mother is some crazy important designer, and our father is a super-important executive in some huge law firm. Actually, considering, they're almost never home. Mother's always off in other countries designing (and honestly, it's mostly to get away from father, because she caught him cheating and uh… yeah, it was gory…), and father's off with his secretary (I hate that bitch so much, it's not even funny).

All this means is that Sakura and I grew up with basically no one except our nanny, and each other. We never had the inclination to be around other people, and there was no reason to be around other kids our age.

That is, of course, until we got sent to a private school for brilliant rich kids. Actually, it's not even for brilliant rich kids; it's just for rich kids whose parents don't give a damn. Thankfully, I don't have to wear a uniform.

I would probably murder something if I had to wear a tiny short skirt and _knee socks_.

Ten minutes later, I got out of the shower, and I ran my fingers through my bright crimson hair, letting it dry without caring about how it looked. My hair is pin-straight anyways, so what's the difference?

I look at my reflection in the mirror, and I think that it's a good thing Sakura and I aren't identical twins. We're fraternal twins, and we look very different. We still both share out family's signature red hair, although, it's in different hues.

I have this awesome bright red, and Sakura got stuck with a really light version of it, and it looks pink, doesn't matter what light we're in.

And basically, our mother forbade her to dye it. And Sakura hasn't gone against that, because then our mother would have our father cut off her credit card, and I think that Sakura would probably be _very_ unhappy with that.

Shopping is one of Sakura's greatest joys in life. She loves it. I have no idea why.

Because, you see, Sakura and I are very different. She likes causing trouble, getting noticed, that sort of thing. Me, I like music (preferably hard rock or punk rock), writing, and hiding in corners.

The biggest thing we have in common in our love of video games.

Sakura's boyfriend, Sasuke, doesn't understand it. He's always over here, but that's probably because he's so busy being love-struck by my sister that nothing else matters to him.

It's actually kind of funny, the way they are together. He's your basic emo -black hair, black clothes, black eyes, and he has this weird love of suspenders and studded belts that Sakura seems to adore. And since Sakura's your basic prep -pretty, popular, too rich for her own good, there are a lot of things that I don't understand about their relationship.

Like how the hell they met each other, maybe?

I yawn for a third time, and slip out of the bathroom, leaving my misty reflection behind me.

I stared into my closet. What to wear, what to wear…

I grab a pair of faded, ripped, and extremely torn-at-the-knees-and-at-the-hems jeans, a black tank top, and my favorite army blazer, and I decide that today would be a good day to wear them. That, plus a pair of fingerless leather gloves that, at one point, belonged to my mother, and I was downstairs, looking for some food.

Our nanny was there, and she was smiling at me. She is old, our nanny, with wispy white hair up in a bun, and eyes that crinkle every time she smiles. She smiles a lot, and I love her for taking care of Sakura and me for so long.

She flips a couple of pancakes onto a plate, and then slides the plate down the counter to me. I sit down on one of the high stool-chairs that my mother has outfitted the house in, and I start happily munching.

I love pancakes.

As I continued to munch on the wonderful pancakes, my sister, still half asleep came crashing into the room. I blinked at her. "Want some?"

She nodded with a groan.

Sakura is not a morning person. Neither am I, but pancakes make _everything_ better. Even terrible mornings where I have to go to school.

I checked the clock (it's an obsessive habit of mine, I dislike not knowing the time), and I poke Sakura. If she's driving, we better leave now. If I'm driving, we're fine for another half hour. School starts at nine, and it's almost 8:20… Yes, I do drive fast.

Sakura groaned, and muttered "Let's go. I'm not happy as it is, and your driving will just make me feel ill. And I have to deal with Ino today in Bio. Give me a break."

I winced in sympathy. Ino is… uh, I don't think there's even a word for what Ino is. Sluttish, maybe? I pat my sister on the back, and then her phone rings, and she glares at it. The ring tone is the Pussycat Dolls, courtesy of Temari being a bitch, because she _knows_ how much Sakura hates them.

"They always got a plan to be her one and only man-" The phone sings at us, and she, in a sort of snarl-ish-pissy way, flicks it open, and groans "Hello?" into it.

Sakura's such a weirdo.

And now she's suddenly talking at a rate that most people can only dream of, and I take a probably-accurate guess that it's Sasuke. He's the only one she goes googley-eyed for, like the way she's going right now, so I'm probably right.

She snaps the phone shut, and send me a happy grin. Okay, where did her early-morning bad mood go?! Oh, yeah, right into the Sasuke-is-amazing-I-love-love-love-love-him section of Sakura's life.

Sigh.

It's not like I'm jealous, because I've never seen her happier, and it's a good thing, I guess. She doesn't whine to me as much.

And at least I mildly _like_ Sasuke. I haven't been able stand her three previous boyfriends. First was Kiba, and I just spent the entire time they were dating wanting to throttle him. And then there was Lee, and he was just… scary… and then there was that period where she dated _Shino_, which was almost scarier then Lee. The kid _talked_ to _bugs_. Need I say more?

"Can we go? Oh, and before you do, could you… I don't know, run a brush through that hair of yours? It looks like you purposely spiked it up in every direction."

I grinned at her. "Kind of like a walking disaster, huh? Yup, that was the look I was going for."

I continued to grin at her, and she groaned, in a sort of half-annoyed, three-quarters-amused. Don't ask me how that works, I don't know. But it does.

So we slip into the car, the beautiful, beautiful, _beautiful_, Audi that my mother had shoved at us for our seventeenth birthday (_thanks_, mom, you could send us a car, but not even a phone call?), my gaze flicks over my reflection the mirror for a second time.

Messy red hair, chunky black glasses, thick black eye liner… Yup, I think, you're a freak of nature, Karin. Good for you. Your mother doesn't give a damn, and she spends her time flying around the world trying to get away from your cheating bastard of a father. Your fucking _grandparents_ are divorced, and they don't even _remember_ your birthday. Well, they do, but it's usually a half-year late, and they don't get around to sending money 'til a few months after _that_.

Great familiar relationships to work with, huh? But it's actually pretty cool, because we send Nana (what we call our nanny… since… forever?) off on month-long trips three times a year.

During the month she's gone, Sakura and I have the house to ourselves.

Actually, one of those month-long trips is coming up, and Nana is leaving later today. I sigh in something like regret, because that means some slut is going to find out, and they're going to get this _great_ idea we should host a party here!

And that means that Sakura and I and Sasuke will end up cleaning. Actually, it will mean that the …urgh, the bastard will be here.

I can't _stand_ him!!! Everything about that stupid _asshole_ just makes me _so mad_. And I mean _everything_. His hair, his eyes, and the freakin' way he _dresses_… He is _so annoying_.

His name is Suigetsu, and he's one of Sasuke's best friends. Well, since Naruto started dating Hinata, we don't see much of either of them, and so the bastard started spending more time with us.

Twitch.

Have I mentioned how much I _hate_ him?!

Sakura has this crazy idea that Suigetsu and I are perfect for each other. We are _not_ perfect for each other.

We met in kindergarten. Sak and I were four, and he had just turned five, along with a couple of the others, like… well, Ino and Sasuke, off the top of my head. The first thing he did was grab my one of my braids, and pulled it so hard that I started crying.

So I smacked him, and it basically knocked him out (actually, it knocked him on his ass, and I hadn't felt better in a long time).

And then I ran off into the bathroom crying, and Hinata and Sak and Temari came rushing after me, and they sent nasty glares at the boys for several weeks afterwards. See, this was still when boys had cooties, and Naruto and Hinata weren't together, and Shikamaru and Temari didn't have their… thing, and Sakura and Sasuke weren't about to run off and get married (I am expecting this to happen sometime in the next few weeks… It's actually scary).

And Suigetsu and I are kind of like water and oil. We don't get along, no matter how much one tried to put us together.

The last time I saw him a couple of weeks ago; at school (I have this tendency to leave the house whenever Sakura invites Sasuke over, because that invariably means Suigetsu is coming along too).

He and I started the biggest food fight in the history of the school, got stuck in a pointless detention together alone, had a few more screaming matches (two of which I won, and in this context, a few means 'three'. Ha, take _that_), and then I ended up throwing a huge, full-colour-picture dictionary at his head.

_That_ was a satisfying experience, not going to lie.

I flick my gaze out the window at the slowly-passing scenery. Sigh. Fuck, Sakura drives so _slow_…

"Sakura, I want to get to school on time, and I'm sure you want to see your precious Sasuke-kun, so could we _please_ speed this up and get going? You're going thirty clicks under the speed limit!!"

She sticks her nose in the air, but, to my great satisfaction, speeds up. She's still barely at the speed-limit, but we're getting there now, and I can see the roof of our school.

"Sakura, if I go home, how much trouble will I get in?" I ask.

She shrugs, and says "Don't you have Broadcasting today? You never skip Broadcasting."

I shake my head. "I have it first, so I'll go to that, and then leave. I'll be back to pick you up, unless you'd rather have Sasuke drive you home."

Hearts entered her eyes, and I had to restrain the urge to roll my own dark orbs. Another weird difference between Sakura and I that most people would never expect twins to have; my eyes are the darkest shade of green, so dark they're basically black, and Sakura's got this bright bottle-green that I'm _sure_ comes from our crazy grandmother on my mum's side (the woman's been married four times, and each one of her husbands have just… died… from the strain of being married to her. The stick that's up her ass is stuck so far up; it's actually coming out of her throat).

Sakura parks after having her moment of Sasuke-kun-ery (I think that's what I'm going to call it from now on), and I jump out.

I'm going to hide in the Broadcasting room, and I know this without knowing it, because my feet trace the familiar pattern.

I don't care what Sakura does, because we're at school now, and most people don't even know we're related here.

I mean, we don't look exactly alike at all, and I hang out with the drama geeks and the art kids and the other Broadcasting losers with too much time on their hands, and Sakura is… popular.

Scary thought, huh?

---

The day passes, and suddenly, there's a party going on at my house on the weekend. I groan, and leave way early, to get Nana out of the house before it starts. She's leaving today anyways, and I don't want her to worry.

Before I leave though, I stick my head into the Art room, and find Hinata painting, as per usual, paint all over the place, wearing one of Naruto's old shirts as a huge smock (before, this simple act of wearing Naruto's clothes as a smock would have been blasphemy in Hinata's world. Yes, that is how much she adores him), and she's got… paintbrushes in her hair.

Okay, that's weird, but it's Hinata. I'm used to it.

"Hey Sunny, you wanna leave early?" I ask her, and she looks up, startled.

Hinata's this sweet, quiet artist girl, and so she spooks really easily. It'd rather funny. Halloween is never boring when Hinata is around.

And right now, she's wearing this deer-in-the-headlights-look, and I know she's going to refuse, so I smirk at her. "Naruto-chan picking you up then, I take it?"

She blushes, and nods. "B-But thanks a-anyways, Karin!"

So I leave, and pull the spare Audi keys out of my pocket, and unlock the door, and get in.

I pull smoothly out of the parking lot, and I drop the roof (god, how I love convertibles cars…), even though it's the middle of January, and it's cold.

The wind ruffles through my hair, and I speed down a one-way-road, in the wrong direction. It's the middle of the day, and no one cares anyways.

I get to the house in a matter of minutes, and I slip into the house. It's quiet when I get in, so I know Nana's already gone, and taken the demon-cat-from-hell with her. No, I'm not even kidding, this cat is from hell.

I check the clock (out of bad-bad-bad habit), and note that Sakura and the others won't be here for a few more hours, which means I have time to sit down and get some serious gaming done.

So sue me, I like video games! I'm a dork, not even going to deny it.

So I grab the controller, and shove Soul Caliber IV into my beloved X-Box, and pick Sophitia as my fighter. I'm a girl, but damn it, I'll save myself. I don't need no fucking knight in shining armor to save me, thank you very much.

I then proceed to beat the computer player into the dust, and am quite proud when it tells me I've beaten the high score.

In your face, Sakura! Suck on _that_!

While I do my victory dance, (the loud one, so I don't hear anything), Sakura and the others get here. I _like_ my victory dance, even if it _is_ really, really, _really_ weird.

"Well, hel-lo there, pinky. What's my favorite little bitch doing?" a very familiar, annoying voice from behind me says.

I don't even turn around to give him one of my 'you-are-the-shit-on-my-shoe' looks, because he's not worth it. I choose Ivy without looking at him, and the computer picks Siegfried, and, once again, I beat him into the ground.

Suigetsu sits down next to me, grabs the other controller, and just as we're about to start a new, probably far more violent, game, yelling comes from the other room. It sounds like Sasuke. What the hell?

Suigetsu and I look at each other, glare, and then rush into the other room. Sakura is on the ground laughing, and Sasuke is glaring at his phone. He throws it across the room, and it cracks open, and Sakura laughs even harder, so much so that she's basically crying.

"What's all this then?" Suigetsu asks, and I silently agree. This is not normal.

Sasuke, showing emotion, Sakura, laughing-so-hard-she's-crying on the ground, me, agreeing with Suigetsu… yeah. Not normal. Not normal at all.

Sasuke continued to glare at the already dead phone, but he muttered something under his breath that I didn't catch.

Sakura obviously did though, because she kept laughing, harder then ever before.

When this idiocy finally calmed down (yes, it took a while), Sakura told us what happened.

Apparently, Sasuke had just gotten a very whiny phone call from his older brother. Actually, maybe 'whiny' wasn't the right word.

"And then Itachi huffed 'I don't _want kids_ yet!!!' and threw a mantrum, whiny crying and all." He threw a mantrum. A man-tantrum. Wow. Dude needs to grow some balls.

"So he got… Ino… pregnant?" I ask.

"Yeah, apparently." Sakura continues to giggle as she says this, and I find myself laughing, too, because the idea that _Itachi_ is throwing a tantrum because he _doesn't want kids_ is just really kind of lame. Funny, but seriously lame.

"Wow, that's kinda fucked up." I say, still laughing.

"I thought your brother was gay." Suigetsu says, and we stare at him. He shrugs.

Sasuke grumbles under his breath. "He _is_ gay, and that's why it's so _wrong_," he mutters, and we all stare at him like he's an alien being.

"So why was he sleeping with Ino?"

"Deidara was away."

I find this particularly funny, because if Itachi was willing to screw a chick that _looks_ like his man-lover, then it couldn't be good for Ino, or Ino's baby. And then, I think of something else, probably just as Sakura does, and we both continue to stare at him like he's an alien being.

"You're going to be an _uncle_!!!" she and I both yell, and then we high-five each other. Speaking in unison sort of becomes second-nature to twins after a while, and this was definitely the case here.

"Let's pinch his adorable cheeks," I say.

"I agree," says Sakura, but only she pinches his cheeks, because while this would be very funny, I need a picture of this for blackmail.

I take said picture with Sakura's shitty camera phone, and we slowly calm down. Although, once in a while, one of still lets out a snort of laughter at Sasuke's expense. Sakura sighs, finally, and says "Your poor, queer brother. He's going to be a _father_."

Another round of hysteric laughter follows this statement.

---

A few hours later, when we've all managed to stop laughing at poor Itachi (this takes a _very_ long time, a lot longer then it should have, actually), and the four of us were sitting on the floor.

Sakura and I playing Tales of Symphonia on our Wii (yes, we have every game system known to man), happily beating the annoying Vanguard into the ground (BAHAHAHA. DIE ALICE, DIE!!!), when Sasuke suddenly decides that Sakura has had enough video games for one day, and that he ought to take her to do something more productive (like cooking him food. The bastard's hungry again. Rawr. And yes, he does this a lot).

And so, he basically picks her up, throws her over his shoulder, with my poor twin screaming all the while that Alice would never be dead without her assistance, and carries her off.

I swear loudly, and pause it.

I _do_, in fact, need my sister to help destroy the evil little bitch, (despite the fact that what they paint is an amusing picture), but Sasuke is already gone, the bastard.

I growl, and Suigetsu sits down beside me, and picks up the controller. I eye him, slightly wary.

He rolls his eyes at me. "I've grown up Karin, give me a chance."

I continue to eye him warily, but I flick the game off pause, and he and I go back to killing the annoying, and ever-so-evil Alice.

Ten minutes later, we finally do watch her (and Decus, for that matter) keel over, and I cheer loudly for no reason. Do you have _any_ idea how long it took me to get to this point?! I jump up and dance around for a bit, pulling Suigetsu with me, pretending that he's not him. Or at least, that's what I tell myself.

Suigetsu laughs at me and my cheering, and I glare at him.

I'm not used to this new, somewhat-grown-up Suigetsu. It's slightly creepy, to be honest.

I throw my gaze back to the screen, where Decus tells Alice he loves her, and then dies, and then Mart-Mart kills Alice, and I cheer some more.

After my cheering is done, I hear Tenebrae say something along the lines of "For Ratatosk's sake, kiss her already!", and apparently, Suigetsu thinks this applies to him, and so he tilts my head up, and he's about to kiss me, and I do basically nothing to stop him.

His lips are soft and warm, and barely there, if only for a second, and I blush slightly when he pulls away.

And then my rational side comes back, and I aim a kick at his shin, which misses. Life be damned, I think to myself.

He grins at me, and sits back down, and pulls me with him. Jerk. He tosses me the first-player controller, and says "This isn't over, pinky. We've still got another game ahead of us," and I slowly nod, because I think he's right.

But at least, this way, we'll be able to play it together.


	2. Of Closets and Exit Signs

Once again, written late at night. This time, I'm sick. Blah. This is an almost-half-continuation of the first part. It _can_ stand alone, but it doesn't have to. Written to Fall Out Boy's first album, mostly to Grand Theft Autumn.

**Disclaimer**: _Still_ not mine.

**Dedication**: To **hypheniated **and **the tomato**, because they both sent me prompts (of a sort =])

---

I wake up. But I don't scream. I haven't woken up screaming in a while.

Well, not a while, it's only been two weeks, because I'm on this new sleeping pill, and it makes me sleep better then usual.

I snort through my nose. It probably won't last; I have this annoying tendency to get a resistance to new sleeping drugs within a few weeks, a month at the most. It annoys Sakura and Nana to no end, because we're always going to the doctor for new pills.

Because, let's face it, mother and father don't care enough to give a damn whether I'm sleeping or not. Hell, they probably wouldn't care if I failed every single class!

Anyways. It doesn't matter. I have to get up, and start making some food. I'm hungry, and Nana's still away on her latest trip; she should be coming back in a week, according to the perfect one's (Sakura's) calendar.

Yes, my twin keeps a calendar. Don't ask me why. Perfection is her strong suit, not mine. I just like being the bane of her existence.

It's not that hard, to be honest.

I yawn, and I'm reaching for my glasses when the phone rings. I yelp, and grab at it. It's a Saturday, and if Sakura is woken up before noon on a Saturday, there _will_ be blood. She's dangerous when she's angry, my twin sister is, and it's not a good idea to get her angry this early in the morning.

It'll raise her blood pressure, and no one wants that.

I yawn a second time, and slip out of our room. I pass one of the mirrors in the hall (there are mirrors _everywhere_ in our house… Mother is kind of obsessive about mirrors. Don't ask me why, I don't know why both my neurotic parents do what they do.

I get into the kitchen, and the gleaming surfaces remind me that our cleaning lady is the best in the world, and that I probably ought to up her pay.

I yawn for a third time (because, damn, it's seriously too early to be alive), and I open the fridge door, fairly intent on rooting around in it until I find something edible. The fridge is always stocked, too, although that's because Sakura and I went shopping after school yesterday.

And the only reason we went shopping was because we had both realized, at the same time, that there was no food in the house. Anywhere. At all.

So we went shopping, and came back with so many groceries, we would probably be fine for a month.

Or, at least, we'd be fine until Sasuke and Naruto and Suigetsu decided to show up and clean us out entirely. It happens a lot, which is kind of annoying, because _they're_ not the one _paying_ for the food.

Boys are just so dumb.

I blink, my vision slightly blurring from the sleep still in my eyes, and I angrily rub the sleep from my dark green orbs. When I blink next, my vision focuses, and I let a smile cross my lips.

I've got cooking to do.

---

I'm halfway through cooking a chives-and-feta-cheese omelet when Sakura finally manages to drag herself down the stairs, and prove to the world that she is, in fact, a living being.

I grin at her.

"Morning, sunshine," I say, and she glares at me.

I have been calling her 'sunshine' for a week now, ever since our mother's last phone call (it was the first one we've had from her in what… a month? Two?), because during said phone call, mother decided to call Sakky 'sunshine'.

To say that Sakura was no pleased was an understatement.

I mean, seriously, even Sasu-chan's picked up on it. It's hilarious. He'll accidentally slip it into his speech patterns, and she freaks out, pounds him into the ground, and goes off in a huff.

Hinata and I find it highly amusing, especially when Naruto and Suigetsu go over and prod him, to see if she's killed him or not. Unfortunately, it never happens.

Don't get me wrong, I like Sasuke, but… Watching him get beat into the ground is amusing.

Actually, watching my sister beat _anyone_ into the ground is amusing.

"Don't _call_ me that," she mutters, annoyed with me.

"Awwwww, but Sasu-chan calls you that!" I cooed at her, my voice all high-pitched and squeaky, in an almost-imitation of Ino's.

Sakura twitches.

"If you _ever_ imitate Ino _again_, I am going to _throttle_ you. The weekends are the only time she leaves me alone! _'Specially_ now that she's preggy, like, for god's sake, all she does is _whine_!!!"

"Sakky, you sound _just_ like her."

"…Shut up."

I roll my eyes at her, and I cut the finally-cooked omelet in half, and then I grin at her cheesily. "Want some?"

"Hand it over," she groans, and I comply, if only because she sounds like she's going to cry.

So we sit at the gleaming counter, and we eat our omelets, and it's silent, and it's nice. I like it like this, when Sakky and I aren't fighting, and it's just quiet.

I love Nana, but she does make life incessantly eventful, which isn't always the most fun of things. Really, just calm is nice, once in a while. I take a gulp of the orange juice sitting next to me happily. I love orange juice.

"Karin?"

I blink and look up and stare at my sister when she says my name. She is holding her cell phone up to her eyes, and is squinting at it. "Say what?" I take another gulp of orange juice.

"Have you ever wondered which, if any, of our friends are gay?"

I swallow the juice (which means I manage to resist the urge to spew it all out of my mouth), and then I say "Not really. I mean, there's Itachi, but…" I take another gulp of orange juice, although I'm suddenly not sure if I should, lest she say something to make me spit it out…

"More specifically," she says, completely ignoring my previous sentence "Have you ever wondered if _Sasuke's_ gay?"

This time I _did_ spit it out. I stare at her, totally incredulous. "Have you _seen_ the way that that boy looks at you?! There is _nothing_ gay in that look."

"Well, yes, but it's just th-"

"No, Sakura, don't start this with me. If he's gay, then both Hinata's boyfriend _and mine_ are in trouble. And it's also saying that you're technically a guy."

This shuts her up, and she goes back to squinting at her cell phone. She is obviously analyzing a picture, but then again, with Sakura, you never know.

"Hmmm… maybe it was Sai, then… Yeah, probably…"

"Sakura, what are you thinking up now?"

She grins at me, and I am scared. When a girl grins like that, one should get as far away as possible. Empires _fall_ when girls grin like that. Seriously, I bet you Elizabeth grinned _exactly_ like that just before the Spanish armada fell…

So sue me, I know my history, all right?

"Well, it's just that yesterday, I could have _sworn_ I saw someone-who-looked-remarkably-like-Sasuke shove someone-else-who-looked-remarkably-like-Naruto into a weird little broom-cupboard-thing… And then proceed to thoroughly choke said person with their tongue."

I stare at her, deadpan. "And just _where_ did you see this?"

She looks away sheepishly. "Right by the Exit Sign at school, in the left wing."

I sigh. How can someone as smart as Sakura be so _dumb_?! Naruto and Sasuke? Together?! _Please_! "Stop and think. Who looks like Sasuke?"

"Sai?"

"Itachi, stupid. And who looks like Naruto? Blond and gay and is currently dating Uchiha Itachi?"

She just blinks at me, and it dawns on her. "Oh, right! Deidara!"

"Duh."

She turns faintly red, and I smirk at her. "Naughty-naughty, sister of mine. Ought to I tell Sasuke that you thought he was cheating on you? And, besides, you said that whoever said person was making out with looked like Ino. Even if he _was_ cheating on you, he still would have been straight."

She gasps, her cheeks now the colour of a fire-engine. It clashes wonderfully with her hair. I snicker.

"I did _not_ think that!"

"Uh-huh, and the Pope is named Ernest."

She continues to be bright red, and just as she's about to retort, her phone rings, the chorus lyrics from the techno remix of 'Fer Sure' dances through the room. I snicker again as she rolls her eyes. Temari may have picked the last ring-tone (the terrible, evil, _horrible_ Pussycat Dolls), but techno is my pick. I love techno.

Actually, I love techno almost as much as I love orange juice. SQUEEE. TECHNO!!!!!! Okay, I've had my moment of temporary insanity, and Sakura is staring at me oddly. How she manages this, while screeching at whoever it was over the phone. It sounds like Ino.

How Ino got Sakura's cell number is a mystery to me.

"Have you _lost_ it?! Techno, for _Ino_?!?!" She squeaks at me, after she's snapped the phone shut with unnecessary force. If she breaks it, I refuse to allow her to splurge on another one.

"Sweet-heart, saying I've lost it implies that I _had_ it at some point."

She grumbles at me, and I smile sweetly. I so love annoying her. "So, what's the agenda for today?" I ask.

She shrugs. "Basically, whatever. Sasuke's coming over, because he's all pissy that I was ignoring him yesterday because I thought he was cheating on me with a _guy_, and I think Hinaru's coming with him, too. And Sui-_chan_ is coming, as well."

"Hinaru? And I resent your use of Suigetsu's name like he's a whipped little baby." I blink at her. Hinaru? That's a new one… Is she trying to make Sasuke jealous with a _chick_?

"Oh," she blushes as she says it. "It's just that Hinata and Naruto, they're always together. And it's way easier just to say 'Hinaru' in reference to them both, then to have to say both their names. And you call Sasuke Sasu-chan _all the time_! How is that fair?!"

I snort. "Great idea, I'm sure Sasuke's gonna _love_ teasing Naruto about it. Make sure you use it around him _lots_. Of course, Neji just might blow a gasket if he hears it… Wait, actually, yes, use it lots! I want to see Neji's brain 'splode! And it _is_ fair, because Sasu-chan _is_ whipped to the stars!""

Sakura gives me a dirty look. "You like picking on him too much. Actually, you like picking on the _both_ of them too much."

"Do you blame me?! They are robots! I dunno how you and Tenten can stand dating them…" I say, and I send her a brilliant, _cheesy_ grin.

She rolls her eyes at me. "Don't grin like that, it makes you look evil."

I continued to grin, because I know it makes her mad.

She groans, and drops her head into the crook of her arms so that she doesn't have to look at my cheesy grin anymore. I laugh, and then I force her to help me slowly start loading the dishwasher.

---

When the rest of everybody decides to show up (at around noon… pfft, losers), Sakura and I are happily blowing aliens to pieces on Halo Live. And we are screaming loudly at the other players (most of who are probably wincing at the pitch of our voices), especially when we win, and they lose. Bahaha.

I love winning.

We both freeze though for a second, though, when we hear the front door open.

It's always the same.

We're freakin' gluttons for punishment, Sakura and I, the both of us. Suigetsu and Sasuke, they don't understand what it's like, when all your parents do is fight, when all they can ever do when they see each other is barely restrain the urge to rip each other to pieces. Some would say its pent-up sexual tension.

It's not.

Our parents just hate each other.

Our parents just _really_ hate each other. But since it's nothing new, it almost doesn't bother us anymore.

Of course, we're not lying. Of course not. Note my sarcasm.

When Suigetsu and Naruto shove themselves into the room with plenty of loud complaining about how there was _no food in this house_, Sakura and I both know that it is time to leave X-Box Live alone, and to feed the bottomless pits that are our friends.

Hinata is trying to get Naruto to calm down, and he is, actually, as soon as she asks him to. Aww, they're so adorable, you just want to rip your eyes out before they _burn_ from all the cuteness. I roll my eyes. and I try to leave, but I find that I'm being restrained by a pair of _arms_. I growl.

"If you guys want food, I suggest you go wash your hands. Dirty fingers are nasty," says Sakura, and then pulls Sasuke from the room like he was on a leash. Of course, with him, it's damn well questionable.

I move to follow, and I try to leave, but I find that I'm being restrained by a pair of _arms_. I growl. "Suigetsu, let _go_ of me, if you want any food, any time soon."

"No," he says, and he nuzzles his nose softly against the back of neck, right in the thick mass of bright red that is my hair.

I roll my eyes behind my thick, chunky black glasses again, but I let myself relax into his grip. The others, either sensing a private moment, or realizing that they were all, in fact, really hungry, they left the room, and left us to our own devices.

Suigetsu pulls me towards the couch, and tosses me on it. I land with an ungraceful 'thump', and I glare at him, my glasses sitting crookedly on my nose. He is _so dumb_, and so I tell him this.

"You're _so dumb_."

"Yeah, but you love me for it."

"Who says I love you?!" I am panicking. Or dear, not good at all. Panicking tends to complicate things.

He grins down at me. "I say you do."

My panic changes to annoyance. Of course he would say that. It's Suigetsu. I grab one of the overly-stuffed pillows my mother so adores, and I thwack him with it.

He falls over.

I roar with laughter, and I grab a second pillow, while throwing the first at his head. It impacts with an even more ungraceful 'thud'.

I continue to roar with laughter.

He sits up, and looks at me, an evil grin on his lips, and a malicious glint in his eyes. _Uh-oh_. _Gulp_.

"You know, of course, that this means war."

I grin back at him. "Of course."

And so it begins.

We build forst and throw pillows, and we laugh like loons, and I realize that I have not had so much fun in a _very_ long time, and that it's probably a good thing I have Suigetsu around, once in a while.

Of course, when one of his unnervingly accurate throws knocks my glasses off my face, I do not quite appreciated that fact, and I thoroughly swear him out, and call a Time until I find them.

When I finally manage it (actually, he found them; but I never would have lost them if he hadn't thrown the bloody pillow at me in the first place), I thrush them back onto my nose, and the war resumes.

They are feather pillows, meant for nothing harder then everyday handle, and careful handle, at that, so I can hear the seams ripping.

And then there are feathers everywhere, white and fluffy and soft, like warm snow. They are floating about the room, and the settle on everything and anything, and I start to laugh.

I laugh and laugh and laugh, and I collapse on the couch, laughing like the crazy loon I am. Suigetsu crumples next to me, and we laugh until we are both out of breath and exhausted.

We stare up at the floating feathers in something like wonder, because the sun is pouring in through the windows and it's illuminating every single feather, so it looks like a million little balls of light. A strange, whimsical sense of calm washes over me, just as Suigetsu wraps an arm around my waist, and pulls me close.

I whisper, not wanting to break the magical silence. "We're a weird pair, aren't we, Suigetsu?"

"That we are, Pinky; that we are."


End file.
